A Critical Ethnography of Social Media: Hitchcock, The Birds, and the Happy Resolution

One of the fascinating things today about the brave new digital social media world is that a lot of those brought up and socialised into a world that thinks that it and its high tech, including its high tech films, are the best of all possible worlds and the best of all possible film worlds, are increasingly watching classic films these days. Though they have been socialised to dislike anything that seems studio bound, while at the same time, and paradoxically so, loving cgi, the new matte paining, while they have been brought up to hate black and white films not realising that black and white is sometimes an aesthetic choice and that some black and white films with their manipulations of light and shadow are works of art, while they have been brought up to prefer realism in their films, something that is ultimately not possible in books, films, or television given the reality that all of them are built on unrealistic manipulations of time and space, and while they have been brought up to dislike anything made in the past because it is technologically “primitive", they are increasingly watching the classic films of directors like Alfred Hitchcock on social media platforms like Patreon and YouTube because they have discovered that they can make monies by doing so. People will, you see, pay reactors to react to books, films, and television shows so they can watch how they react to them. Presumably, these voyeurs hope to see the reactor react positively to something they like, a fact that many reactors realise which is why they make sure to tailor their reactions so they can continue to make monies from their social media reactions. Commodity “aestheticism".

Alfred Hitchcock, of course, is one of the greatest directors of film of all time. He is one of the few masters of the cinematic craft and film art, as many of those watching his films on social media platforms for profit are learning. Hitchcock is not only the legendary master of suspense but he knows how to compose in black and white and colour, he knows how use music, he knows how to compose shots, he knows how to use delaying techniques for maximum tension, he knows, as did Shakespeare, mix tonal variations—comedy meets black comedy, meets drama, meets suspense, meets highbrow wit, meets even tragedy—all in order to manipulate those watching his films and to provide pleasure for those watching his films. One can, by the way, see just how good Hitchcock was at doing all of this even today thanks to the contemporary social media reactors we have been talking about, social media reactors who often describe how they were on the edge of their seats while watching a Hitchcock film. 

Not surprisingly, the Hitchcock film that seems to be the most viewed by YouTube reactors these days is his 1960 film Psycho. This is not surprising given that horror films—which Hitchcock did not make despite some reactors thinking he did--along with science fiction films and action adventure films, the new Westerns of modern Hollywood (see Die Hard), are among the most popular genres in contemporary comic book oriented Hollywoodland. Some reactors are, however, watching other Hitchcock classics as well including Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), and The Birds (1963). A few viewers are even watching Notorious (1946), a kind of companion piece to North by Northwest and one of my favourite Hitchcock films, and Strangers on a Train (1951), both in glorious black and white. Very few, unfortunately, are watching Hitchcock’s British films, films such as the brilliant The 39 Steps (1935) and the brilliant The Lady Vanishes (1938), films that are as good as any films Hitchcock ever made,  

While the social media reactions to all of these Hitchcock films are interesting the social media reactions to The Birds are particularly interesting because they tell us something about the socialisation of social media reactors. The Birds is not your typical Hollywood film. Hollywood films are typically of the fairy tale variety with happy endings. They typically, in other words, have happy resolutions. The Birds, however, does not have a happy fairy tale resolution. Melanie (Tippi Hedren) and Mitch (the Australian Rod Taylor) may have found love by end of The Birds, by the end of the bird attacks that helped bring them together, but Hitchcock does not tell us the reason for the bird attacks on Bodega Bay north of San Francisco in the first place. Was it Melanie herself? Was it the caged love birds Melanie brought with her from San Francisco to the Brenner’s house in Bodega Bay for Mitch’s sisters birthday? Was it god looking down at the chaos caused by the attack of the birds on Bodega Bay, California and beyond and laughing at the absurdity of it all? Was it the end of the world predicted by Christians ever since the advent of that faith? Hitchcock doesn’t give us an answer or the answer. Nor does Hitchcock tell us how what we have just seen on the screen ended. Do Melanie, Mitch, Mitch’s mother, and Mitch’s sister escape the bird attacks after they drive off in their sports car at the end of the film? We don’t know. We can only speculate, surmise, hypothesise and most humans don’t like to do any of those three things.

In my experience those brought up on a steady diet of unrealistic fairy tales with happy endings and generally happy resolutions have difficulty, to use a contemporary phrase, wrapping their heads around works of art that don’t have happy endings where boy gets girl and life goes wonderfully on. I still recall, for instance, that when one of my relatives from Russia who was brought up in the Soviet Union of the 1970s on.a steady diet of happy resolutions came to visit me and we watched an episode of X-Files that didn’t have a happy resolution that she was flummoxed by the lack of a happy ending. She couldn’t understand why everything wasn’t tied up in happy social realist or disneyish bright ribbons and bows. Similarly, many reactors, most of them Americans I suspect, have the same reaction to The Birds. Why, the wonder, does the film not tie everything up in bright ribbons and bows?. Boo. Hiss. They can’t handle the truth that life often doesn’t have happy endings. And this is why, I suspect, those viewers who love Rear Window, who love Vertigo, who love North by Northwest, and who love Psycho, don’t equally love The Birds. 

I, on the other hand (and yes I do realise that value is in the socialised eyes of the beholder), think that The Birds is one of Hitchcock’s greatest works for exactly the same reason most reactors don’t like it: it doesn’t have a happy Hollywood ending. And that is why, I suppose, that I also prefer the art cinema, particularly the “foreign” art cinema, to Hollywood. The art cinema is, I would argue, more “real” than that of Hollywood. That, however, is not why most people watch movies. They may sing a mantra like chorus of we want realism in our films but they really go to see movies because they want to escape from the “real world”.  They go to see movies because they want the fairy tale. They go to see movies because they want the happy endings. They go to see movies because they want everything tied up in bright and happy ribbons and bows. They want, in other words, the bread and the circus. And who can blame them. Life, after all, is not a fairy tale. It does not often end happily. It is not often tied up in bright and happy ribbons and bows. Life is generally, as the Buddha said long ago, typified by suffering and the films Hollywood produces provide, as does religion, many with the serenity they need to get through it. They need their pie in the sky.